All of a sudden I find myself reading with keen interest this old school Dobb-Sweezy debate on the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Western Europe, and I’m thinking, why the fuck do I care? Part of it is that I want to move on to other mode of production debates, outside of the European context, and all of that shit. But then there’s something that Sweezy writes — that “we live in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism.” It occurs to me, then, that the reason I’m reading any of it in the first place is because I believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that if we aren’t ourselves now living in a time of transition from capitalism to socialism — a time when people are questioning the very roots of capitalism and searching for a humane and just alternative system of organizing the whole wide world — then we damn well ought to be, and I’d like to help make that transition happen.